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Sturgess was born in London, but grew up in Farnham, Surrey, where he attended Frensham Heights School. He spent most of his youth skateboarding around his local car parks and started his first band as early as 15 years old where they would rehearse in the garage of his friend's dad's house. The band would also play gigs in and around his local area to any publican that would turn a blind eye to the fact that they were all under age. Sturgess's first acting experience came when the local theatre group came to his school looking for kids to audition for the local play. Quickly realising that he would be able to miss school, he went along to the audition and landed one of the parts in the play. It was clear to both his school and his parents that he had a natural talent, but it was always music rather than acting that was at the forefront of his mind.

Sturgess moved to Manchester to attend Salford University hoping it would enable him to start another band and hang around the Manchester music scene, where most of his music idols were from. In Manchester, he fell in with a group of aspiring actors and filmmakers, and his passion for acting was re-ignited. He started to write and perform his own short films and plays. While performing his one person show 'BUZZIN', based around his performance poetry, Jim was discovered by an acting agent. He graduated from the University of Salford in 1999 with an HND in Media and Performance.[4]

In 2007, he got his big break when he was cast in Julie Taymor's musical Across the Universe, portraying Jude Feeny, a paternally shorn young man who travels to the US amid the raging throes of the late 1960s and falls in love with a sheltered American teenager, Lucy, played by Evan Rachel Wood.

Heartless, a film directed by Philip Ridley, premiered on 31 August 2009[9] at the London FrightFest Film Festival, a popular horror film festival. Sturgess appears as Jamie Morgan, a young man whose life has always been blighted by the large, heart-shaped port wine birthmark on his face and sells his soul to the devil. Jim Sturgess won the Best Actor Award at the 2010 Fantasporto Film Festival for his role. The film also won the Best Film Award and the Best Director Award for Philip Ridley.

Also during 2010, he filmed Upside Down. Filming was completed in May 2010 in Montreal, and as of early 2013 a limited international release was planned.[12] Described as a "sci-fi romance", the film is the second full-length feature from the writer and director Juan Solanas. It was originally slated for release in 2011,[13] but delays pushed back the release date.

A third film project in 2010 was Promised Land which was to be directed by Michael Winterbottom and, according to Variety, "will recount the lead up to the 1948 partition of Palestine and the subsequent creation of the state of Israel". Sturgess was to star as a British officer hunting down the extremist Jewish factions. The film was later put on hiatus because funding could not be secured.[14]

In March and April 2011, filming took place for Ashes,[15] a film directed by Mat Whitecross. The picture has been described as a contemporary film noir thriller that stars Ray Winstone and Lesley Manville along with Sturgess. Filmed in the Isle of Man, the production is being partially funded by the band Coldplay, university friends of the director.[16] Sturgess co-starred in Cloud Atlas, which began filming in September 2011 and was released in October 2012.

Sturgess has been writing and performing his own music since the age of 15. He has played around the Camden music scene for many years in bands such as Saint Faith and Dilated Spies. He has also written music for some of his films including two tracks that he wrote and performed for Crossing Over, and collaborated with director Philip Ridley on three tracks that appeared in the film Heartless.